Posts Tagged ‘Gift Ideas’

Do you want to create a wine country wedding? If so, here is a splendid way to do so without having to recite your nuptials amidst sun-kissed vineyards (of course that wouldn’t hurt).

Create unique, memorable, one-of-a-kind customized wine labels for your reception tables, as wedding favors or to drink during the blissful celebration. Comartin Cellars offers customized wine labels packaged with delicious California-grown wines for soon-to-be-brides and grooms. Work directly with their creative director, Katie Comartin, to design a customized label based upon your wedding colors, your invites, your destination wedding local, or any other fun, creative idea that a couple has as inspiration.

Romantic labels for giving good gift

This is an ideal way to cement your wine country wedding themed event. Cheers!

For more on Autumn Millhouse and her book Romantic Napa Valley, An Insider’s Guide for Couples, click here.

About Autumn

Autumn Millhouse is an award-winning travel writer who specializes in wine, food and romantic getaways. She is also an international trekker who has wined and dined across the globe from Barcelona to Beijing . A self-proclaimed “hopeless-romantic” and author of Romantic Napa Valley: An Insider’s Guide for Couples, Autumn also has a bi-monthly column called “Love Vines” published in Napa Valley Life Magazine. She resides in Napa Valley where she cultivates her wine and food relationships with top chefs, winemakers and a slew of other foodies. Besides, sniffing, swirling and sipping wine daily, Autumn is currently working on her next travel book Romantic Sonoma Valley: An Insider’s Guide for Couples.

Hey Anti-Brides, tired of returning that vase you’ll never use, or the gravy boat that will wallow in obscurity? Want to make sure that those wedding presents actually go to work for you? Here is a fantastic wedding registry that gets you closer to what you really want, a house (not just stuff to put in it. Read on!From Erin-Marie MacEwen, Founder

Beep. Click. Beep. Click. Click. Scannnnn. Beep. Click. Click. Scannnnnn. Beep. Click. Oh, the sounds of a traditional retail wedding registry. I remember it like yesterday. Walking into Macy’s in downtown San Francisco, it felt like we were embarking on a shopping spree. Who can argue with the fun that comes with that? I can tell you, it was fun. But, was it practical? Was it fun for the moment and frustrating to deal with afterward? Was it confusing and completly overwhelming? Absolutely.

My now-husband and I registered at a few places for our wedding. Being part of a large, traditional family it was important that we registered in the traditional way – at a retail store. Some guests simply prefer to give a physical gift, so for the few things we really needed – a duvet cover – it was great. For the things we didn’t necessarily need, well … it was confusing. Do we register for china and crystal because we’re ‘supposed’ to? Do we register for things just for fun, for things that we don’t need? Can we return gifts later if we decide they don’t work in our home?

Luckily, out of this confusion came a bit of clarity. When we really thought about it, what would be helpful for us was money towards down payment on a home. It’s been a lifelong dream of ours to have a home of our own, so any help towards that dream was a dream in and of itself. The problem was that it wasn’t very fun to tell guests we wanted cash towards a home. In fact, it was a little awkward and felt a little rude. To help alleviate this problem, we asked ourselves, how could we make this fun? After brainstorming a bit, we came up with Hatch My House– an online, interactive registry to help us – and other couples – save towards a home.

Map out your future dream home.

Hatch My House enables couples to create a visual representation – a picture – of their future home. Using this picture, wedding guests donate towards the couples’ house fund by purchasing a part of that house, such as a window, the front door or even a set of wineglasses. Guests get to have fun while donating and couples get to design, visualize – and hopefully realize – their ‘dream’ home.

Hatch My House ended up being the perfect solution to our wedding registry dilemma. By using it as our wedding registry, we were able to save a few thousand dollars towards our future home. We’re hopeful that you’ll be able to save as we did, so please check out the details – How It Works and Benefits – as outlined below.

HOW IT WORKS
•To set up a registry on Hatch My House, couples first write a welcome note to their guests describing the goal of the house fund in Step 1.
•In step 2, they customize their ‘dream’ house, selecting their desired setting, style – craftsman or brownstone (with more on the way) – and color.
•Couples finalize their registry in step 3 by linking their new or existing PayPal account to HMH. By completing a simple form verifying their PayPal email, they’re ready for step 4 – to publish their registry.
•In step 4 couples pay a one-time sign up fee of $24.95 to publish their registry and get directed to their personalized URL link.
•By copying this link, in step 5, they direct family members and friends to their registry – and start saving towards a home immediately!

BENEFITS
By using Hatch My House, couples take advantage of PayPal, reaping the benefits of being aligned with a 10-year money transfer service business and a built-in security infrastructure, which includes data encryption and fraud prevention tools.

They also benefit from lower transaction fees in comparison to other online gift and down payment registries. Hatch My House is one of the few online registries that offers a 0% to 3% transaction fee.

Not only that, but by using Hatch My House, couples get to benefit from an easy-to-use, convenient online registry without any hassles!

• No shipping charges!
• No sales tax!
• No parking fees!
• No long hours spent scanning items at the store!
• No returns!
• No hassles!

As a special thanks to Antibride, we’re offering anyone who signs up this week a 20% discount. Sign up HERE and use the coupon code: ANTIBRIDE.

About Hatch My House

Erin-Marie recently discovered Antibride.com. She wished she had known about Carolyn’s awesome site and books when she was a bride as it would have helped her navigate through the confusion of the ‘traditional registry’. Luckily, she and her now-husband got clarity when they developed Hatch My House, an online wedding registry where anyone can save towards a home in a fun and interactive way. Using Hatch My House for their wedding registry, they were able to save a few thousand dollars towards their future home. Now, they hope to give others the same opportunity by launching Hatch My House for public use (as of Dec. 2010).